


The Boy on the Train

by middleofmiddle



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Masturbation, katniss is a good sister
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-01
Updated: 2020-06-01
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:27:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24484309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middleofmiddle/pseuds/middleofmiddle
Summary: Katniss has a brutal commute, but she knows what to do-- earphones in, eyes jammed shut, arms crossed. Until one day, a blond stranger sits next to her, and changes everything.
Relationships: Katniss Everdeen/Peeta Mellark
Comments: 19
Kudos: 131





	The Boy on the Train

**Author's Note:**

> I have been reading everlark fanfiction for an embarrassingly long time, and while ideas for stories have popped in my head before, I've never tried my hand at the whole writing it out part. Let alone the posting it part. SO. Thank you for reading this, and let me know what you thought!

Of course Gale would move away and leave her to face her commute alone without a second thought. Scowling while stifling a yawn, Katniss secured her headphones over her ears and entered the last car in the 10-car train. The commute to the capital from District 12 was long, and as the train headed inbound and people piled in, the train cars invariably became jam-packed, with barely room to breathe. Luckily, the one advantage of commuting from so far was that District 12 was the start of the line, and at 6:30 in the morning, Katniss had her choice of seats. 

So naturally, it irked her when someone sat right next to her on the bench seat. Prior to that, the morning had actually been going well. Prim found out that she'd been chosen to represent her school at the statewide History Day competition in a few weeks, which could mean a scholarship for future schooling. In celebration, Katniss splurged and purchased the new Jabberjays album for them, and had been listening to it, humming along as she climbed on board the train. 

Then the man sat down next to her. Katniss huffed aloud. She quickly glanced around the train car and confirmed that there were many other empty rows-- nearly the whole car was vacant-- why on earth did he sit right next to her? What kind of a weirdo _was_ he?

Out of the corner of her eyes, Katniss sneaked a look at the man, and was caught off guard by how... well, _normal_ looking he appeared. He seemed about her age, dressed in nice pressed gray trousers, and a light blue dress shirt. He was holding a section of the newspaper folded back, and seemed to be engrossed in the article he was reading. His forearms were strong, with a smattering of blond hair. He had a nice smell, she decided suddenly, something wholesome and comforting. Katniss almost turned her head fully to try and get a glimpse of his face, but caught herself, and instead, closed her eyes, and leaned her head against the window. Normal or not, he was encroaching on her space, and she didn't appreciate it. 

* * *

The man sat right next to her again the next day. And the next. Annoyed when he sat next to her on Thursday, Katniss decided to switch seats. She grabbed her backpack with one hand and turned her head to ask him to move his knees so she get could get by him. But just as she opened her mouth, the man looked at her and smiled. 

"Hey, I’m Peeta," he said, extending an arm. 

Katniss stared at him, in shock for a moment. It was the first time she'd gotten a direct, prolonged look at him, and in a word, he was beautiful. Wavy blond hair and a strong jaw line. And eyes so blue they seemed bottomless. 

Peeta cleared his throat, his arm still hanging between them. 

Mentally shaking herself, Katniss let go of her backpack strap and reached her hand forward to shake his. 

“Katniss," she offered back, inwardly cringing at this exchange and already trying to figure out a way to stop any conversation that might follow because of it. She released his hand, and immediately crossed her arms over her chest. 

But that was it. Peeta smiled, hesitated for a second while looking at her, and then looked down at his paper again. Nothing further. And slowly, Katniss relaxed back into her seat, abandoning all thoughts of switching spots, her mind whirling.

Uncomfortable as she was during the exchange, there was something nice about knowing his name. She found herself thinking about him, this man on the train-- where did he work? What did he do for a living? Peeta, what an unusual name. The man who sat next her nearly every morning, who now knew her name.

The silence between them continued for two more weeks. Katniss came close to breaking it herself a few times. One morning, she thought about commenting on how unexpectedly cold it was, before she stopped the words on her tongue and clamped her lips shut. What was wrong with her? She didn’t want to start a conversation with anyone, let alone engage in small talk with Peeta. 

* * *

It had been one of those nightmarish mornings. Prim had been up all night with a stomach bug. Katniss stayed up to help her to the bathroom, read to her, and make her tea. She’d fallen asleep in the chair in Prim’s room early in the morning only to wake up an hour later with a start, realizing she had to be at the station in twenty minutes or she’d be late for work. She was exhausted when she sat on the train, and leaned her head against the window and closed her eyes. She fell asleep and dreamed about a warm cabin nestled in the deep woods, blanketed with snow. Someone called her name, and she turned in a circle looking for the speaker, taking in the snow-covered evergreens around her. “Katniss,” she heard again, and she woke up to someone lightly touching her upper arm. Her eyes blinked open and landed on Peeta, his face close to her own. “Katniss. Katniss. Your stop is here.” 

And as she roused, disoriented, Katniss was struck by _how_ he said her name. As if he had said it before, countless times. None of the usual hesitation or questionlike inflection that people had when saying her name for the first time, unsure of the pronunciation. Certainly not like Gale, who called her Catpiss for nearly three years after they first met. The way Peeta said her name woke up her whole body and she felt immobile as she looked straight into his eyes, until she heard the click and slide of the train doors opening, and saw that they'd reached City Center Station. On instinct, she jumped up and squeezed past him, forgetting to thank him in her hurry to get to the platform before the doors closed. 

The sound of his voice saying her name came back to her at random moments throughout the week. She even heard it in her dreams, Peeta calling for her from another room in a house they share. Or saying her name in bed, his voice breaking while she sat astride him and rocking against him slowly in the dark of the morning. 

After one of those particularly fevered dreams, she woke up impossibly hot, and said his name out loud, alone in the privacy of her own bedroom. Not so loudly that Prim would hear from the other room. 

"Peeta," she said, testing it out. Peeta. There, she thought. If she ever needed to use it, she was ready. 

But the weeks passed with no change between them. Embarrassed that she ran off the train without thanking him, Katniss did not quite know how to bring it up and express her gratitude after the fact. She felt strangely in his debt, but also had grown comfortable in the routine they seemed to have. She got on train at the Seam Stop in District 12, took a window seat in the last train car, and Peeta boarded one stop later at Merchant Circle, and sat right next to her on the plastic two-seater bench seat. The only change was now they exchanged smiles when he climbed aboard. 

Until one week, she didn't see Peeta for three days straight. 

Katniss found herself wondering about him, a slight edge to her concern that she tried her best to ignore. Vacation, maybe he went on vacation? It was the middle of February, maybe he just took a break. Or maybe he was sick-- nothing serious, but enough to warrant staying home. 

But she felt something was wrong— she just _knew_ it somehow, and she drove herself crazy with thoughts of what might have happened to him. But on the fourth day, Peeta came on, limping into the train using crutches, his left leg in a boot cast, the left side of his face scratched up. Before she fully realized it, the words burst out of her. 

"Oh my goodness, Peeta, what happened to you?"

He startled and paused in his path toward her. Their eyes met and she saw her shock reflected in his eyes. He closed the gap between them and shot her a rueful smile. 

"Well," he said, shifting both crutches into one hand and slowly lowering himself into the seat, "I got hurt playing what was supposed to be a friendly game of football." 

"Football? This--" Katniss gestured to his face, "happened because of a _football_?" 

"Well..." Peeta trailed off, the half-grin on his face sobering a bit. "Actually, it's because of a tree. I was trying to catch the football at the top of endzone, which was also the treeline, but my brother Rye was covering me, and was right up on me and when we both jumped up to catch the ball, I sort of... crashed into a tree." 

It was only as she watched him grimace as he recollected the feeling of impact against the tree that Katniss acknowledged to herself the sense of relief she was feeling. Peeta was okay. He was here, bruised, but joking about it. 

"Looks like in this round of "Man vs. Nature", Nature handed you your ass," she teased, before stiffening slightly. What was she doing? Talking to him like she would to Gale, like she knew him well enough to joke at his expense? 

Peeta stilled a bit, and then smiled back at her, his eyes dancing. "True, but I'll have you know that in that round of Peeta vs. Rye Mellark, I handed him _his_ ass-- I caught that ball despite his egregious passing interference-- and won the game." 

Katniss could not help the short snort that escaped her. 

* * *

And they started to talk. Little things. Like favorite colors and places. Really, Peeta did most of the talking. He had not one but two older brothers, she learned. His family owned a bakery, and after his oldest brother, Bran, had a baby, Peeta had been helping them with the morning baking before catching the train into the capital, where he worked as an architect. 

Talking to him was surprisingly easy, and made the commute fly by. 

One day, Katniss was complaining about Prim's obsession with clothes. 

"She spends hours combing the racks, picking things to try on, picking things for _me_ to try on... ugh. And then, in the morning before school she literally puts on and removes five different outfits before settling on what to wear. Every. single. day. In high school, I basically wore the same thing every day-- green cargo pants and a black tank top-- so I never had to think about it. I didn’t want to think about it. But she, like, relishes it. She is always after to me to buy new things because apparently everything I own, like this blouse,” Katniss pinched the material of her purple shirt, “is apparently, _so_ last year.” Katniss raised her voice slightly and added a whine, “oh my gosh, Katniss, how can you even wear that? You look like my French teacher and she’s like, 50 years old.”

Peeta chuckled slightly, then smirked and reached his fingers to lightly brush her shoulder. "Well, I’m no expert or anything but I think that cap sleeves went out of fashion in the late aughts, actually.”

Katniss scowled back at him, and swatted his fingers away. 

Peeta held his hands up, laughing. “Sorry, couldn’t resist. But outdated as it may be, it looks good on you. ”

Katniss flushed a little. "You think my outdated violet shirt looks good on me?" she said, thinking to be sarcastic but it came out breathier than she had intended. Flirtier. 

"Yeah. You, uh, always look good", he replied, turning to look right at her, and though the corners of his lips were turned up from his earlier laugh, the look in his eyes was searing and determined and she felt the force it make her whole body spark. 

"Yeah?" She asked, dumbly. 

"Katniss--" he swallowed, and she watched his Adam's apple bob up and down the column of his throat. "Katniss, I think about you all the time. I have ever since I heard you singing on the platform that day months ago and sat next to you hoping you'd keep going. Do you-- would you want-- only if you want to-- to maybe have dinner with me?" 

The hopeful look on his face, the shining in his eyes, made Katniss look away for just a moment as she took a steadying breath. 

The woman's voice from above floated down, "City Center Station. Doors opening on the right", and instinctively Katniss jumped to make it out. But before she flitted out the door, she turned and gave Peeta a wide smile. She thought she saw one spreading across his face, as she turned and the train car pulled out of the station. 

* * *

Prim yammered on and on during dinner, and try as she might, Katniss couldn't concentrate on a word that was being said. She climbed into bed early-- it wasn’t even 9pm-- but she wanted to be alone. She thought of Peeta that night and didn’t stop herself. Lying on her back, her legs butterflied open, she dragged the fingers of her right hand up through her folds, spreading the moisture that was seeping out of her, using it to make her movements slick and smooth.

It was slow at first, she was barely wiggling her longest finger on that spot, teasing it, and she pictured him. His broad shoulders, the outline of his chest through his shirt that she saw sometimes. She thought about running her hands through his hair, and grabbing it to tilt his head and kiss him.

And all of a sudden she saw see how it might go.

She’s sitting in an empty train car, in her usual seat. The train stops at Merchant Circle, and he gets on, and takes his spot next to her. When she looks up to smile at him, the expression on his face stops her short. He’s looking at her seriously, with an intensity that makes her breathing speed up. Slowly, slowly he leans toward her, and her eyes flutter shut as he kisses the corner of her mouth. The feel of his mouth on her face, his exhale, a little shaky, ghosting over the side of her face is what does it. She turns fully to face him, and pushes her fingers in his hair and kisses him full on. She’s sucking on his bottom lip and he’s groaning and she feels a thrill at the noise, that she was the one the elicit such a sound. She moves so that she’s sitting on his lap facing him with her knees on either side of him, rocking into him, her hands in his hair giving her leverage to tilt his head back and lick his neck.

Katniss’s fingers rubbed harder now, two fingers quickly moving side to side as tingles shot into the bottoms of her feet. She felt energy swirling around her body, warmth that seemed to be coming from inside her, starting to collect around the base of her spine. Her fingers were rubbing in small circles with firm pressure and she started to feel her body pulse erratically.

Somehow now Peeta has unbuckled his pants and lifted her skirt, and shoves her underwear to one side and then she carefully lowers into him, so wet that he glides right in. And she closes her eyes and gives into sensation— the feel of him inside her, the fire burning in her low belly, her knees digging into the hard plastic seat, the sound of their breaths mixed with the rumble of the train as it speeds towards its next stop. The train car abruptly jerks to one side and she is thrown off balance slightly, but then quickly steadied by Peeta’s arms around her. The movement and new angle sends a blaze of pleasure through her and she finds herself bucking her hips and moaning and riding him, gripping the hard plastic headrests on either side of his head for support to grind against him, the bumpy track beneath them just adding to the whole feeling. 

On her bed, eyes closed, Katniss flipped over onto her stomach, her right hand under her, wrist bent, and the shift in position allows a rush of moisture to leak of her, and she’s sweating, writhing, trying to see where she's going, trying to--

"Katniss?" There was a knock on her door. Prim. 

“You’ll be able to do it, right? Pick me up at 3:00pm instead of 4:00pm so I can get to the community college in time?"

Katniss panted in her room, her hand under her frozen as she begged silently that Prim doesn't let herself in. 

"Sure, Prim, " she said, mostly out of reflex. She heard a muffled "thanks" as the sound of Prim's footsteps moved away from her door and down the hall to her own room. 

Her mind still whirling, Katniss sat up. It came back to her-- Prim, appealing to her guidance counselor and submitting a petition to take organic chemistry at the local community college during spring quarter instead of physics at the high school so that she could get a leg up in the necessary medical school prequisite courses. Prim, excitedly chattering at dinner about how she was accepted and that this meant... this meant... Katniss would have to pick her up at high school and drive her to the community college. Which meant she had to leave work early. Which meant... which meant she had to get to work early. Which meant...

She had to take the 5:30am train. Starting tomorrow. 

* * *

As she waited on the dark platform the next morning and the mornings after, Katniss had her headphones on and a scowl on her face. She knew she shouldn't be mad, but she was. Her commute felt even longer now, and all she could think about is Peeta, and what he must think. That he'd think the whole thing was one-sided, made up in his head, and that she deliberately altered her commute to never have to see him again. 

But the thought struck her one Wednesday morning, a full fortnight after her new commuting schedule had been in place. The thought jolted through her and put a smile on her face for the first time in two weeks, and she was suddenly that much more excited for the weekend. 

Saturday found Katniss waiting at Seam Station again. She had forgone her usual mushroom foraging walk in the woods to take the train to Merchant Circle, and got off, a little disoriented. She'd been to this part of town before, of course, as a child. But there were precious few reasons for her to come to the high-end shopping district as she could barely afford the frivolous train ticket there. She found the bakery tucked in between two boutiques, a lovely smell of melted butter and cinnamon wafting out. She checked her reflection once in the glass screen of her phone before pushing the door open. 

Peeta wasn't there, or at least, he wasn't manning the front of the house. A blonde man with a similar build was behind the counter and looked at her expectantly. Was that Bran? Or Rye? Katniss felt the disappointment in the pit of her stomach, and then quickly busied herself by looking at the pastry case, 

"Hi there," the man behind the counter said. "Can I help you with anything?"

Katniss looked up and gave him a tight smile. 

"Hi," she said, eyes cast down as though busy perusing the pasty case. "Um... I'll just get a blueberry muffin." 

The man quickly grabbed one with tongs and put it in a bag. “Great, anything else?"

This was it. Katniss steeled herself and reminded herself that she was grown-ass woman who was capable of asking for what she wanted in life. 

"Um... is Peeta here?" she asked, looking up at the man, but not quite making eye contact. 

The man's eyebrows shot up, and Katniss felt a flush rise on her cheeks. 

"Peeta doesn't work on weekends. But I can give him a message..." 

Katniss frowned slightly. Maybe this was a bad idea. But she’d already come all this way and wasted the time and the money, so she took a deep breath, and said, "Could you let him know that Katniss came by?"

The man wrote something down on an ordering pad in front of him, "Sure. Let’s see... Kat...niss?"

She nodded, and then recited her phone number.

The blond man looked back up at her and smiled. 

“Okay, Katniss, I’ll definitely let him know you stopped by.”

"Thanks," she said, as she grabbed the paper sleeve with the muffin. She hastily placed a few bills on the counter and left before he could say anything else. 

Katniss walked home. It was nearly two miles, but she felt wound up from nerves and the disappointment of not seeing Peeta, and needed time to think. 

Her phone rang as she approached home. It was a number she didn't recognize. Katniss stared at screen for several seconds, her body filling with hope. 

"Hello? 

"Katniss? Hi. It's Peeta."

The sound of his voice lifts Katniss up, and she can't contain her grin, or the elation that floods her body.

“Hi Peeta,” she said. "What are you doing tonight?"

**Author's Note:**

> The line about "being a grown ass woman" was directly inspired by another everlark work called "The First Time" by everlarkeologist, in which Katniss reminds herself that she is a "grown-ass woman" who is capable of buying her own damn condoms. That line has always stuck with me as a very Katniss thing to think, and I've used it similarly here. If you have not read that story, you absolutely should!


End file.
